How to Avoid These Auto Dealer Digital Marketing Traps

25 June 2019

Marketing a car dealer website on the internet is challenging enough at the best of times. No matter how brilliant your service is, there will be times where you need to go with some trial and error as well.

In this article, we’ll share information about a few mistakes that must be avoided when it comes to the online marketing of your auto dealership.

1. Ineffective Use of Social Media

A lot of car dealer websites still struggle with figuring out how to sensibly make use of social media in their marketing initiatives. Many of them fall into the trap of trying to reach out to as many people as possible and appealing to all of them, rather than focusing on their own local community and niches.

Another issue that auto dealers face is that their content quickly becomes stagnant, since they post the same things over and over again, which results in followers losing interest.

It pays to understand the strengths of different social networks. For example, Facebook is brilliant at sharing posts and building consumer engagement. Visual content works best on Instagram.

Car dealerships should also consider using the newer tools available, to both promote growth and track it.

2. Using Below Par Imagery

This is by far one of the biggest mistakes you can do in online marketing.

If you’ve taken the trouble to create a state-of-the-art marketing campaign in order to drive more prospects to your vehicle dealership, make sure the campaign creative, especially the car imagery, matches the sophistication of your campaign plan. It can all be let down the moment you use low quality images.

3. Not Sticking to the Plan

Many auto dealers create excellent marketing plans but they panic and start modifying these plans when results don’t appear within weeks. ROI takes time to build, especially if your dealership is new to organic online marketing. Social media, SEO, and so on are usually slow at the beginning.

Improving search engine rankings and gaining audiences worth marketing to on multiple social media networks usually take its own time. Don’t be in a rush to modify or kill campaigns prematurely. But do keep a close eye on things, and if you’re sure that your strategy isn’t really yielding the expected results, go ahead and make the necessary changes.

Meanwhile, remember to include a hard hitting PPC/ Social advertising component in your plan, in order to get results even before your organic online marketing starts delivering results

4. Being Too Pushy on the Sales Front

One major mistake we often see is dealerships publishing social posts that actually look like ads.

People come to social media to read posts, chat, read reviews, browse through engaging content, and so on. If the first thing that they see is your car dealer profile trying to make a sale, it’ll give your potential customers a notion that you’re only interested in their money and nothing else. On social media, always create an interesting content mix that your prospects will be interested in, in order to build your social credibility.

For more ideas on How to Market your Auto Dealership Online, Contact Us.